Plant decay is characterized by decomposition and putrefaction ( bad smell ) caused by any of hundreds of species of bacteria and fungi. The decay may be hard, dry, spongy, watery, mushy, or slimy and may affect any plant part.
The excessive moisture of a plant in watery decay
does not indicate that its rootball was over watered when it was packed : a decomposed plant will have released its water content, which is a
lot of water, in general 95% of a plant is water. So this water from the plant itself plus water evaporated from around the rootball ( coconut or sphagnum moss ) , mixed and they give now you the
impression that packing was over watered, faulty.
Cells have a membrane, and in the case of plants also a cell wall, which hold back the water and the other contents of the cell, such as salts, proteins, metabolites/sugar, and nucleic acids. When individual cells die, they dissolve ( biologists say the "lyze" or "undergo lysis") and their content are no longer held back, but begin to freely float between the surrounding cells. The more cells die, the more cell contents will be set free. This "water" is rich in nutrients, and bacteria/fungi just love it and will thrive in it.
This causes the bad smell.
If you want to reproduce it, take a cucumber, wrap it in a tight plastic bag, and let nature go its way. After a week or two, the cucumber will be almost dissolved, setting free all of its water, and will rot and stink.
That's what happens to all plant material when it dies in a humid environment (such as a plastic bag). The roots did just that. The tissue started to die, and it reached you before it completely dissolved into a blackish stinky mush.
Nevertheless, when you squeeze it, lot of cell water will already come out of the root ball - and it will have a bad smell because of the bacteria. The
root tissue also will start to have a different texture - from being crisp and elastic it will turn to sponge-like, soft and compressible. If this happens, the plant will no longer be able to survive with these roots. Parts of the stem and the leaves might still be ok (especially if only the root balls had been in a plastic bag, but the leaves exposed outside) and come back after re-rooting.
The good thing is that healthy plant parts are quite tough against the bacteria in the rotten parts (these bacteria are part of the normal environment of the plant anyway), meaning
the rot usually is not contagious. So, cutting the dead parts away in a generous way (cutting well into the healthy part, that is) will "rescue" the healthy part. Whether it can root again, however, depends a lot on the species.
Some plants (mint, for example, or willow) regrow roots within a week, others will just never do it and die.
Fortunately for us, Hoyas are plants that are more on the "mint" side, and most Hoya species re-root quite easily.
Hoya and other plant collections are for sale on aleyagarden.com Plant care is available in various posts of this blog. Contact : aleyagarden@hotmail.com
Find all Aleyagarden posts on http://aleyagarden-blog.blogspot.com
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impression that packing was over watered, faulty. 
Hoya seedlings bring so many unexpected results ! in this picture on the left we got two Hoya lacunosa seedlings : none of the two has the small sized leaves of the lacunosa grown from cut above, and the seedling on the left has distinctly rounder and larger leaves. They are approximately the same age.
The secret of making bubble baths lies in a simple process : take about 120 gr of a soap that has retained its glycerin content ( such as a homemade soap or a quality soap ), and mix it with about 950 gr of water and 85 gr of glycerin. Glycerin is available in bottles, shops selling ingredients for cosmetics and craft stores will carry it.
We see that the ratio of canola oil to NaOH pellets is roughly 7.6 ( ie 1 / 0.13 ) and water to NaOH is roughly 2.3 ( ie 0.30 / 0.13 )
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